I was thrilled the day I stumbled upon direct response. I was about two years into my advertising career, and I have to tell you, I was psyched. Here was a way to evaluate advertising by its contribution to the bottom line, instead of by soft measures like getting noticed, being remembered, and being creative.

The more I tracked advertising performance, the more I saw that what I learned in college about how to advertise was grounded more in tradition than in knowledge. So was the work most ad agencies did. Including the one our company used. (I was a client in those days.) 

But then, so was the work of our competitors’ agencies. This spelled opportunity! We could be the first in our market to get it right. We could grab more market share and increase profits before the competition knew what hit them. This was exciting! 

My employer and our agency didn’t share my enthusiasm.

They wanted the kind of advertising that everyone else had. (A desire, I have since observed, often espoused most strongly by the same people who want advertising that makes them “stand out.”) As for the evidence I presented? Dismissed.

(Now you know, in part, why I opened my own shop.)

I am no longer surprised when people prefer not to entertain the possibility that their advertising could be more effective. Denial is a wonderful tool. It is humanity’s time-honored mechanism for coping with cognitive dissonance. Heaven forbid we should change how we think, or how we do things.

But if results matter more to you than comfort zones, I urge you to dig into direct response marketing. The incredibly valuable information you will discover isn’t secret. It just might as well be.

Steve Cuno

If skepticism means "naysaying," we're already in trouble, since that's not how I use the word. 

For clarity's sake, then, I'll use the term "evidence-based thinking." EBT for short.

EBT is a marketer's silver bullet. It lets you rise above emotion and speculation as you evaluate a marketing effort from a scientific standpoint. Rather than rate a campaign by how well-liked it is by you, your focus groups, the Board of Directors, and the Board of Director's spouses, you can rate it in terms of (1) if it's making or costing money; (2) how it compares against other strategies; (3) how it performs down to cost-per-sale; (4) how to make it perform even better; and (5) reliable, projected future performance.

(If it's news to you that you really can measure effectiveness to that level of detail, you're not alone. Most clients and agencies don't know how. How to do EBT is a subject for another blog, not to mention an entire chapter in my book. For today's blog, I want to focus on the benefits of EBT.)

Granted, with a scientific or evidence-based approach, you risk learning that the cute campaign everyone loves isn't making money. Worse, you may learn that the cheesy campaign you hate is going gangbusters.

There are two ways to handle that information. If you're stubborn or insecure, you can stop measuring results—stop gathering evidence—in order to stick with your pet campaign, free from inconvenient data. Sadly, I have seen more than one client do exactly that.

Or, you can bid a tearful farewell to the cute campaign and go with what your market has shown, with their wallets, to be the better one.

Learning to let the evidence lead you to the facts is a discipline of its own. It's not always easy to do, in marketing or, for that matter, in life. But if you're more interested in knowing than supposing, then skepticism or evidence-based thinking can be your greatest tool.

Steve Cuno